During the last century, labor control laws have had an unquestionable effect on the lives of every worker, both employers and employees. Labor control laws refer generally to all statutes, regulations, and rules relating to and regulating employers and employees, and include "wage and hour" laws which place strict regulations on an employee's wages and work hours. The most well known federal wage and hour laws, for example, set minimum wage requirements for all workers and set maximum hour limits on the amount of time an employee may work without receiving overtime pay. Other lesser known wage and hour laws set minimum time periods that must be allocated for breaks and meal periods throughout the day.
Recently, there has been increased attention directed towards the enforcement of labor control laws, particularly child labor laws. Child labor laws, which generally regulate and control the employment of minors, were originally implemented to curtail the oppressive employment of children in hazardous work environments, particularly in mines and factories, which was widespread at the time. Such extreme cases of child labor oppression are no longer prevalent, due in large part to the enactment of these laws. Nevertheless, the reach of child labor laws has expanded over the years and now extends into all areas of the country's work sector, including the retail, restaurant and fast food industries, which traditionally employ the largest concentrations of child labor.
The number of different child labor laws currently in existence, both on the national level and the local level, is overwhelming. Some of the laws are very general in nature, while others are much more specific and narrow in scope. The Federal Labor Standards Act, for example, includes child labor provisions which generally forbid any employer from employing any "oppressive child labor" in commerce. In addition, there are dozens of federal regulations enacted under this law that place very specific restrictions on child labor, including limitations on the hours that a minor may work.
In addition to the numerous federal statutes and regulations in the area, every state has adopted its own set of rules regulating child labor. Most of these local statutes and regulations are designed to supplement the federal regulations by placing additional restrictions on the employment of child labor, particularly on the hours that a minor may work.
As the enforcement of child labor laws has gained greater attention, the penalties assessed for violations of these laws have increased in severity. For example, the Federal Labor Standards Act assesses a fine of up to $1,000 for each violation. In addition, local labor boards assess their own fines which are often as much as $4,000 per violation per child. Furthermore, in some states, employers may be held criminally liable for violations of child labor laws, even in cases where the employee voluntarily works beyond the number of hours set by the labor statute. Typically these penalties are assessed regardless of the intent of the employer.
Because the employment of child labor is so highly regulated, it is often extremely difficult for employers to stay in compliance with the complicated maze of federal and local regulations. Child labor laws, for example, often provide different sets of rules depending on the particular age of the minor, e.g., 14 years old or less, between the ages of 14 and 16, and 16 years old or older. In addition, there are different restrictions placed on the number of hours that a minor may work on a particular day or in a week depending on whether the school at which the minor regularly attends is in session. One federal regulation, for example, provides that a minor between the ages of 14 and 16 may work only:
1. outside of school hours; PA1 2. not more than 40 hours in any one week when school is not in session; PA1 3. not more than 18 hours in any one week when school is in session; PA1 4. not more than 8 hours in any one day when school is not in session; PA1 5. not more than 3 hours in any one day when school is in session; and PA1 6. between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. in any one day, except during the summer, when the evening is extended until 9 p.m.
Adding to the complexity is the fact that it is not uncommon for local child labor laws to overlap with federal regulations by providing slightly different restrictions on child labor. For example, one Georgia law currently provides that a minor under 16 years of age is not permitted to work between the hours of 9 p.m. and 6 a.m.. Another statute forbids a minor under the age of 16 from working for more than four hours on any day in which school is in session, for more than eight hours on days other than school days, or for more than 40 hours in any one week.
It will thus be appreciated that it is a tremendous burden for employers to stay in compliance with child labor regulations. Each employer must keep abreast of not only federal rules and regulations in the area, but also of the local regulations in each state in which that employer employs a minor. Thus the burden is particularly great for large employers, for example in the retail, restaurant or fast food industries, in which it is not uncommon to employ minors in several, if not all fifty, states.
Unfortunately, even those employers that make an effort to remain up-to-date with applicable child labor regulations often will often unwittingly allow child labor violations to occur. In contrast to the early part of the century when the majority of child labor violations involved the deliberate exploitation of children as a cheap labor source in hazardous work environments, the most common child labor violations today occur when an employer inadvertently schedules or allows a minor employee to work beyond the maximum number of hours set by statute. Often a child labor violation will occur despite the employer having scheduled all of its minor employers in accordance with applicable rules and regulations. Typically these violations occur when an employee inadvertently, or perhaps voluntarily, works beyond his or her scheduled number of hours.
For example, an employer, when preparing its weekly work schedules, may appropriately schedule one of its minor employees to work a four hour shift on a particular school day, realizing that the applicable child labor laws allow a minor to work a maximum of four hours on school days. Despite having scheduled the minor employee appropriately, there are a number of instances that may occur which may nonetheless place the employer in violation of a child labor regulation. For example, the employee may clock in a few minutes early or clock out a few minutes late, causing the employee to be on the clock for longer than the four hours permitted by statute. Often the employer will not even realize that a child labor violation has occurred until the employee time records are later reviewed by a labor control board.
The problem for employers is not limited to child labor violations. Employers are also at risk for unintentionally violating other labor control laws. For example, a federal wage and hour regulation provides that an employer must provide a lunch break of at least thirty minutes for an employee that works a full eight hour shift. Even though an employer may appropriately schedule a thirty minute lunch break in an employee's schedule, the employer may unknowingly violate this regulation. For example, an employee may regularly not take a full thirty minute lunch break despite being scheduled to do so. The employer's weekly time clock records would thus fail to reflect the thirty minute lunch break for that employee, as required by law, thereby placing the employer at risk of violating the labor control law.
Thus, it would be beneficial to employers to have a system that would monitor the number of hours that an employee works and provide an alert message to a supervisor before a labor control violation occurs. Currently, many employers utilize electronic time clock systems for clocking in and out of work and for keeping track of how long an employee has worked on any given day or week. Current electronic time clock systems, however, do not provide a mechanism for alerting an employer of a potential labor control violation, such as a child labor violation or a wage and hour law violation, before its occurrence.
Some conventional systems, for example as described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,633,627 to Kilian and U.S. Pat. No. 4,331,953 to Blevins et al., are designed to monitor the length of time that a person remains in a defined region. These systems include remote transmitters having internal timers which are carried by the person or persons to be monitored. Upon the expiration of a predetermined amount of time, the remote unit will transmit a signal to a central location.
None of these conventional systems, however, are suitable for use as an automated labor alert and remote messaging system, because none of them provide an interface with an employee time clock system in order to provide real-time monitoring of alarm events associated with the number of hours worked by employees. Furthermore, because these conventional systems require each person that is to be monitored to carry a remote transmitter, they are particularly unsuitable for large employers, in which potentially many hundreds or even thousands of employees would be required to be equipped with these remote devices, each having a separately initialized timer.
Thus there is a need for an automated alert system that monitors the scheduling and hours of employees for potential labor control violations, particularly child labor violations and wage and hour law violations, and automatically notifies employers of potential violations before they occur.
Furthermore, there is a need for an alert system that is interfaced with the time clock system utilized by the employer in order to allow for real-time monitoring of alarm events associated with the number of hours worked by employees or with time of day restrictions on work by certain classes of employees.
Furthermore, there is a need for an alert system that automatically notifies a supervisor of a potential labor control violation with sufficient time to prevent the violation from occurring, thereby saving the employer the substantial expenses that would otherwise be forthcoming in fines or other assessments.